Civic Rhetoric—Meeting the Communal Interplay of the Provincial and the Cosmopolitan: Barack Obama's Notre Dame Speech, May 17, 2009

Abstract

President Obama's commencement address on the University of Notre Dame campus evoked substantial controversy, providing public demonstration of rhetorical differences and demands generated by differing provincial and cosmopolitan positions. I contend that public civic rhetoric, in an era of narrative and virtue contention, must address the creative interplay of both provincial and cosmopolitan perspectives. In this essay I examine reactions to the Obama address from news sources connected with the local Catholic diocese, as well as the South Bend and University of Notre Dame newspapers. I argue that Obama's address is an example of a public civic speech that openly engaged the interplay of provincial and cosmopolitan understandings of a controversial communal common center. Obama's Notre Dame speech framed discourse that walks within a world of tension and difference on the public stage, highlighting the communal rhetorical constitution of a speech moment shaped through the interplay of provincial and cosmopolitan commitments.